My Lil' Mule

I spent Saturday doing more work on the axle housings. Today was rust prevention and paint! With 60+ degrees, this was the best day I was going to get for a while.

Finished taping off parts of the housing I didn’t want painted – locker plugs, pinion yokes, diff covers, etc. and applied 3 coats of Rust Bullet Automotive. This stuff, I am told, is pretty awesome for preventing rust. Needs 50+ degrees for ideal temp, so today had to be the day. But you have to follow the directions. Comes in cans, and it is expensive. The quart I bought was $45. Plus there is a special solvent you have to use. No way I was going to brush it on, so I bought an HVLP gravity feed spray gun.

You just need to remove the loose scale, although I went a little better than that, and paint it on. The Rust Bullet reacts with the rust and hardens it, locking it in place. I had to apply at least 3 coats (to get .0006 inches), waiting no less than 4, and no more than 6 hours between coats. Any longer and you have to wait 24 hours, scuff everything with 150 grit sandpaper, before you can apply another coat. First coat went on at around 10:00 this morning. Then at 2:30 and again at 7:00.

Roughly 4 hours later, I applied the top coat of matte black. You have to apply the top coat within 6 hours as well, or you have to scuff it up again. I’ve heard that if you don’t do this, the top coat will just peel off. I screwed up and only ordered one can of black paint. Got lucky and it covered everything. I’ll go back in a couple days and apply a second and maybe third coat of black.

Still to do:

* Replace axle seals
* Install ball joints, steering knuckles, unit bearings and axle shafts
* Install diff covers
* Install and wire switches for lockers
* Install axles!

Painted the steering knuckles and diff covers.

Still need to clean off the machined surfaces on the knuckles with a Dremel.

Got the bearings in today. These are NOT what the cross reference says I should use for a 2014. The only difference was the length of the ABS wire. These were much easier to find and a lot cheaper.

I’ll be ordering the Teraflex ball joints and some Lube Lockers this weekend.

Got these back from the sand blaster today. They look so shiny. Now to paint them blue!

A couple of updates.

Got the housings back from Davis Race Car on Saturday morning and the situation was much better than expected. Jason went ahead and took apart the rear carrier and the pinion to make sure everything was OK. Everything checked out just fine. He did notice the bulkhead connector for the locker was broken, so he replaced that. Put it all back together and installed the stock pinion flange. Even after all of that, the total bill was only $65.13. He could have easily charged me a lot more. Super nice guy. He came highly recommended, and now I know why.

Davis Race Car is about 45 miles from my house. I borrowed a trailer from my old boss for a while to drag the housings from place to place. Went and picked them up, got about 500 feet from my house and CLANK, CLANK! I looked in my side view mirror and saw the front housing hanging over the side of the trailer by the ratchet straps I tied it down with. Oops. I don’t believe it hit the ground, but pretty scary. I lifted it up and put it back on the trailer. I wish I had taken a picture. No harm, no foul. But I’m glad it happened on my street than at 75MPH.

After I got them home, I was looking over the axles, and noticed this:

This is where the truss on the driver’s side is welded to the pumpkin. Not sure what happened. It could have been related to the above mishap, but could have also been a cold weld? Texted Andy and took them back to his place Saturday evening.

All fixed! Thanks, Andy!

Quick update on the gear situation.

I took the axle housings to Davis Race Car in Madison, OH to have Jason take a look at them, just to set my mind at ease. After checking the backlash on both the front an rear, they were BOTH within spec. The front was .006 and the rear was .007. The patterns were acceptable. Great news!

My great news was short lived. 

While I was there, I wanted him to replace the rear pinion yoke with a stock flange, so it would mate with my rear drive shaft. Once he removed the yoke and started tightening down the pinion nut on the flange, the pinion quit moving. Which means there is either no crush sleeve in the pinion, or it was over tightened prior. We hadn’t even started torquing down the nut enough to even start to crush it, had it been intact.

So rather than take any chances, I decide to leave them both there, have them each disassembled and the pinion checked. The gears were fine, they will not be replaced, at least not at this point, unless he finds something else. Plus, I’m going to have him replace the inner seals while he is in the front.

I have really broken the budget on this mod, I think I’ve pretty much shattered it. LOL!

BUT, I am still ahead of the game had I gone a different direction (i.e. new housings, etc.)

Well, another 90 minutes, and another 1/2 bottle of MAP gas (not really, it just felt that way) and the other side is done!

The top one came out fairly quickly, less than 10 minutes. The bottom, as expected, was MUCH more difficult. I had to heat it up repeatedly. Got out the wire wheel and cleaned all of the rust off of the top of the joint and the adjacent C. Even used a little Pb Blaster after the heat, and then applied more heat. I’m wondering if that didn’t help more than I think.

I’ve helped do ball joints a couple times before, and by far, these were the most difficult. I’m sure there are quite a few factors that went into that.

I also completely removed the rear shafts. Hoping to take these to a drive line shop on Saturday to have them checked out and anything I can make it easier, and less labor, and cheaper, I’m going to do.

So I figured I’d spend an hour or so tonight and remove the ball joints on the front housing.

If only it were that easy! Hah!

With the housing loose, I can’t put a breaker bar on the ball joint press and get any good leverage, so my only option was the impact wrench.

Took me nearly two hours and a lot of heat, and a little sledge, to just get one side off. I’m saving the other side for later in the week.

Before I install these bad boys, I want to double check that the gears were done right by the shop that did them. I know at least one thing is wonky, the actuator bracket for the rear locker isn’t right. There’s a tab that fits into a slot on the actuator, and it’s not even close. I bought a new bracket, hopefully, I can take care of this myself.

I also bought some Prussian Blue – man that yellow stuff is EXPENSIVE – painted the ring gears. I put a load on the pinions and tried to run a pattern. Being blue, it’s not as clear as the yellow, but here they are. I just don’t know if these are within tolerance, or do these need to go to a drive line shop for new gears and install.

Any R&P experts out there, please feel free to chime in.

The rear:

The front: